DEV Community: Deepak Sir

ColdFusion HTML-to-PDF Improvements in 2025: cfhtmltopdf, Jetty, and IP Restrictions

Deepak Sir — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 05:28:10 +0000

The biggest 2025 change to ColdFusion’s HTML-to-PDF stack is a security one: IP-based filtering on the Jetty server that hosts the PDF service (PDFg). It shipped in the April 2025 security updates (ColdFusion 2025 Update 1, 2023 Update 13, and 2021 Update 19) and works through an ipaccess module enabled in Jetty's start.ini plus a jetty-ipaccess.xml file in /cfusion/jetty/etc, which holds a whitelist and a blacklist of IP addresses. Alongside it, the 2025 release added PDF form pre-filling in cfhtmltopdf, and Updates 2 and 3 fixed several PDF-service bugs (service registration errors, an encrypted-PDF NoClassDefFoundError, and font embedding). The catch: after the update, many teams hit a "PDF service disappears when I edit it in the Administrator" problem, caused by 127.0.0.1 missing from the new allow list on non-Windows systems. This guide explains what changed, how the Jetty IP filter works, how to configure it safely (including multi-server setups), and how to troubleshoot it, using only what Adobe's documentation and tech notes state.
Read More

ColdFusion cfspreadsheet vs Apache POI: Handling Large Excel Files Without Memory Crashes

Deepak Sir — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 05:48:31 +0000

cfspreadsheet and Apache POI are not really rivals — ColdFusion's Office/spreadsheet handling is built on Apache POI, so the real question is which POI mode your code ends up using. The classic ColdFusion spreadsheet functions work on a workbook held in the JVM heap, and Apache POI's own documentation says the standard XSSF (.xlsx) API "gives access to all rows in the document" and has a higher memory footprint than the older .xls format. That is why a .xlsx with hundreds of thousands of rows can end in java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: GC overhead limit exceeded. The fix is to switch to a streaming mode that keeps only a small window of rows in memory: for writing, POI's SXSSF (default window of 100 rows, older rows flushed to temp files on disk); for reading, POI's event (SAX) API or a streaming reader built on it. You no longer have to hand-roll that in CFML if you're on current engines: Adobe ColdFusion 2025 added native streaming functions (streamingSpreadsheetNew, streamingSpreadsheetRead, streamingSpreadsheetProcess, streamingSpreadsheetCleanup), and the open-source Spreadsheet CFML library wraps POI's streaming support (newStreamingXlsx, readLargeFile, processLargeFile) for Lucee and Adobe ColdFusion. Pair streaming with sensible JVM heap settings, batched database access, and background processing, and large Excel jobs stop being a production risk.
Read More

ColdFusion CFMail Broken After Security Update: The Felix Cache Fix Explained

Deepak Sir — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:11:55 +0000

If started throwing errors — or pages started hanging and returning HTTP 500 — right after you applied a ColdFusion security update, and the stack trace mentions MailImpl.signMail, VerifyError / "Bad type on operand stack," and BouncyCastle (org/bouncycastle/asn1/smime/...), you've hit a known, documented problem. It's not your code. The cause is a stale Apache Felix (OSGi) bundle cache: the update ships new library bundles (including the BouncyCastle crypto libraries ColdFusion uses to sign mail), but ColdFusion's Felix cache still holds the old, now-incompatible bundle versions, so class loading fails when cfmail tries to sign a message. The fix is short: stop ColdFusion, delete the contents of the felix-cache directory, and restart — ColdFusion regenerates the bundle cache from the updated libraries on the next start. The path is /cfusion/bin/felix-cache (or /bin/felix-cache for additional instances). This has been reported on ColdFusion 2021 (Update 21) and ColdFusion 2023 (Update 15), and the same cache-clearing fix applies. This guide explains what the Felix cache is, exactly why the update breaks cfmail, the precise fix steps, how to confirm it worked, and how to stop it happening on the next update.
Read More

ColdFusion cfmail SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Setup: Stop Your Emails Landing in Spam

Deepak Sir — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 06:17:29 +0000

If your messages are landing in spam, the fix is almost never in your ColdFusion code — it's in your DNS records and your sending mail server. Email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) happens at the domain and mail-server layer, not inside CFML. simply hands your message to an SMTP server (configured in the ColdFusion Administrator or on the tag); that SMTP server — and the DNS records for your From domain — are what receiving servers like Gmail and Outlook actually check. To stop the spam-foldering you need three DNS TXT records for your sending domain: SPF (lists which servers are allowed to send for your domain), DKIM (cryptographically signs your mail so it can't be forged or tampered with), and DMARC (tells receivers what to do when SPF/DKIM fail, and sends you reports). Then you make sure the From address in your matches the authenticated domain and that ColdFusion relays through a server covered by those records. This guide shows exactly how the three records work, the record syntax, how to wire and the CF Administrator so mail is sent from an authenticated domain, and the verification steps — all grounded in how the standards actually operate.
Read More

Lucee Cold Start Performance vs Adobe ColdFusion: JVM Warm-up Strategies Compared

Deepak Sir — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 06:01:45 +0000

“Cold start” in ColdFusion is really two problems stacked on top of each other, and separating them is the whole game. The bottom layer is the JVM itself — both Lucee and Adobe ColdFusion run on the Java HotSpot VM, so both start every method in the interpreter and only compile hot code to native later, through tiered JIT compilation (levels 0–4, C1 then C2). That warm-up penalty is identical for both engines because it belongs to the JVM, not to CFML. The top layer is CFML-specific: the first time a .cfm/.cfc runs, the engine must compile that template to Java bytecode, and that is where Lucee and Adobe CF genuinely differ — different compilers, different class-loading behavior, and different caching controls (Adobe's Trusted Cache, template caching in both). So the honest framing is: you cannot make Lucee or Adobe CF "start warm" — you can only shorten each layer. The JVM layer is tuned the same way on both (tiered compilation flags, heap/metaspace sizing, class-data sharing); the CFML layer is shortened by pre-compiling templates and enabling the engine's template/trusted cache so the first real request doesn't pay the compile cost. This guide separates the two layers, shows what's the same, what's different, and the warm-up strategies that actually move the needle — with the JVM flags to use.
Read More

Lucee Extensions Ecosystem: The Best Community Modules for APIs, Caching, and Cloud

Deepak Sir — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 05:22:02 +0000

Lucee’s power comes as much from its ecosystem as its core, and that ecosystem has two layers worth knowing. Lucee extensions are server-level add-ons (installed through the Lucee Administrator / .CFConfig.json) that plug capabilities into the engine itself — the Ortus Redis Lucee Extension for distributed caching and the MongoDB Lucee Extension for NoSQL are the standouts. CFML modules on ForgeBox (installed per-application with CommandBox, box install) are the larger world of reusable libraries — for APIs, the best are Taffy (a low-friction REST framework), hyper (Ortus's fluent HTTP client for calling APIs), and cbSwagger (auto-generated OpenAPI/Swagger docs); for caching, CacheBox (the caching engine bundled with ColdBox) plus the Redis extension and cbstorages for distributed, cache-backed sessions; for cloud, the MongoDB and Redis extensions, S3 access (native Lucee s3:// plus SDK modules), and cbstorages as a storage abstraction. All of it installs through CommandBox/ForgeBox (box install) or the Lucee Administrator, and much runs on Adobe ColdFusion too — the CFML ecosystem is shared. This guide covers the best community modules and extensions across APIs, caching, and cloud, with what each does and how to use it.
Read More

CVE-2024–55354 in Lucee: Patching the April 2025 Vulnerability and Preventing Recurrence

Deepak Sir — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 06:05:02 +0000

CVE-2024–55354 is a protection-mechanism-failure vulnerability in Lucee disclosed in Lucee’s April 2025 security advisory: it lets an attacker run code that should have been blocked and access resources that should have been protected by bypassing Lucee’s sandboxing. The mechanism is specific — an attacker who can write files to the server can copy pre-compiled bytecode files and save them as .cfm or .cfc files, which Lucee then executes, sidestepping the security restrictions applied to normal source code. It primarily threatens multi-tenant/shared-hosting environments that rely on web-context sandboxing to isolate tenants. The fix is twofold: upgrade to a patched Lucee version — 5.4.7.3 LTS (released April 8, 2025), 6.1.1.118+, 6.2.0.321+, 6.2.1 RCs, or 7.0.0.178 (where the protection is on by default) — and/or enable the bytecode-blocking setting via the Java system property -Dlucee.compiler.block_bytecode=true (or environment variable LUCEE_COMPILER_BLOCK_BYTECODE=true), then restart Lucee. This setting blocks pre-compiled bytecode from running as .cfm/.cfc while preserving normal source compilation. This guide covers exactly what the vulnerability is, how to patch it, and how to prevent this class of issue from recurring.
Read More

BoxLang 1.13: What Ortus Solutions’ JVM Language Means for the Future of CFML

Deepak Sir — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 05:32:58 +0000

BoxLang is a modern, dynamic JVM language created by Ortus Solutions (the team behind CommandBox, ColdBox, and TestBox) that runs your existing CFML natively while giving CFML developers a fresh, multi-runtime language for the next decade. It combines ideas from Java, CFML, Python, Ruby, Go, and PHP into a low-verbosity syntax, and — crucially for CFML teams — it uses a dual-parser design so you can run applications written in CFML within BoxLang natively, with a compatibility module preserving legacy behavior. It’s open source (Apache 2, with an optional BoxLang+ subscription for enhanced support) and deploys across an unusually wide set of runtimes: the JVM/OS, web servers and servlet containers, AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions, iOS/Android, and WebAssembly, with CommandBox as its package/server/REPL tooling. The 1.13.0 release (April 30, 2026) — themed “Compatibility, Concurrency, and Formatter Maturity” — closed 48 issues focused on production hardening: deeper CFML compatibility (SOAP headers, query.setColumnNames()), async/concurrency reliability fixes, and a production-ready code formatter with a CI check mode. For CFML teams, BoxLang matters because it offers a forward path that runs today's CFML while modernizing the language, runtimes, and tooling underneath it — from the same vendor whose tools you likely already use. This guide covers what BoxLang is, what 1.13 delivered, and what it means for CFML's future.
Read More

Lucee + CommandBox in Docker: The Fastest ColdFusion Dev Environment Setup in 2025

Deepak Sir — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 08:06:16 +0000

The quickest way to a working ColdFusion/CFML development environment in 2025 is the official CommandBox Docker image running Lucee — no installer, no manual JVM setup, no configuring a web server, and an identical environment for every developer and CI runner. You pull ortussolutions/commandbox:lucee6 (the official CommandBox image from Ortus, with an engine-specific tag), mount your app into /app, and expose port 8080 — that's a running Lucee server in one command:

docker run -p 8080:8080 -v "$(pwd):/app" ortussolutions/commandbox:lucee6

From there, a small box.json (dependencies), an optional server.json (engine/port), and a .cfconfig.json (datasources/settings) make the environment fully declarative and version-controlled. Set BOX_INSTALL=true to install dependencies on start, BOX_SERVER_APP_CFENGINE to pick the engine (e.g. lucee@6), and cfconfig_-prefixed env vars (like cfconfig_adminPassword) to configure the server without touching a UI. A docker-compose.yml adds your database alongside it. The result: git clone → docker compose up → a full CFML stack in minutes, identical for everyone. This guide walks the whole setup, with the verified image tags, environment variables, and config files.
Read More

Migrating From Adobe ColdFusion to Lucee: Code Compatibility, Pitfalls, and Wins

Deepak Sir — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 06:37:22 +0000

Migrating a ColdFusion application from Adobe ColdFusion to Lucee is realistic — both run CFML on the JVM and share most of the same language, so most well-written code moves with modest effort — but it’s not a zero-change port, and treating it as one is how migrations go wrong. Lucee is broadly compatible with Adobe ColdFusion, and Lucee’s own team tracks the known differences under an acf-compat label, but there are real gaps to plan for: features Lucee unbundles into optional extensions (Hibernate ORM, cfchart, cfsearch/Lucene, FORM, AXIS web services, AJAX, EHCache — you install these on Lucee, Adobe bundles them), behavior differences (Lucee 6's cfqueryparam no longer autocasts empty values to null; string member functions changed to match Adobe), and Adobe-specific/deprecated features (Flash Remoting, certain Adobe-only tags/services) that need replacing. The wins are equally real: zero licensing cost (no $760/$2,930-per-year subscription), a lighter, faster-starting, container-friendly engine with JSON configuration (.CFConfig.json), and a fast community release cadence. The path is a staged migration: audit → set up Lucee → run your test suite → fix compatibility gaps → benchmark → cut over. This guide covers the compatibility reality, the specific pitfalls, and the wins.
Read More

Lucee 6 vs Adobe ColdFusion 2025: A Real Technical Comparison for Teams Deciding in 2026

Deepak Sir — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:29:45 +0000

Lucee 6 and Adobe ColdFusion 2025 both run CFML on the JVM and share most of the same language — most CFML code runs on either with minimal changes — so the choice isn’t “which is better” but “which fits your team, budget, and governance.” Adobe ColdFusion 2025 is the commercial, batteries-included platform: it ships PDF generation, Office integration, a scheduler, ORM, WebSocket, monitoring, an Administrator UI, and vendor support out of the box, on a new subscription license — $760/year for Standard, $2,930/year for Enterprise (per server) — with a major release every two years plus regular hotfixes. Lucee 6 is the free, open-source CFML engine (maintained by the Lucee Association Switzerland, descended from Railo): zero licensing cost, lightweight and modular (many features are now installable extensions rather than bundled), with JSON-based configuration (.CFConfig.json), a new Single Mode architecture, and a fast, community-driven release cadence. The trade-off in one line: ColdFusion gives you an integrated platform, official support, and vendor accountability for a license fee; Lucee gives you a lean, free, cloud-friendly, rapidly-updated engine that expects more DIY. This guide compares them across cost, architecture, features, compatibility, DevOps, and support — for teams deciding in 2026.
Read More

ColdFusion Test Coverage Reports: Integrating TestBox With GitHub Actions and SonarQube

Deepak Sir — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 06:07:03 +0000

Test coverage tells you what percentage of your ColdFusion source actually runs under your tests — a low number means you’re under-tested — and you can generate, publish, and gate on it by wiring TestBox into GitHub Actions and SonarQube. The one ColdFusion-specific catch: TestBox’s code coverage requires a licensed copy of FusionReactor connected to the app under test (it’s what instruments the bytecode to track executed lines), easiest to run via CommandBox. Once coverage is on, TestBox can emit a SonarQube-compatible coverage XML directly (coverageSonarQubeXMLOutputPath), plus an HTML report. From there: in GitHub Actions you run the suite, produce the coverage report, and surface it on pull requests; in SonarQube you analyze CFML with the stepstone-tech/sonar-coldfusion plugin (a CFLint-based ColdFusion analyzer) and feed it the TestBox coverage XML so coverage shows on the SonarQube dashboard and a quality gate can block a merge that drops below your threshold. This guide covers enabling TestBox coverage, the FusionReactor requirement, the GitHub Actions pipeline, and the SonarQube integration — with config and workflow examples.
Read More